Thursday, September 27, 2012

Happy Birthday, Barbara

I wasn't going to post anything political outside of a single link (the one above) this election season, because any and all subtlety or humor I try to bring to my posts here abandons me like passengers of the Hindenburg when I wax political. Truly, a good half of the essays on that site are wonderful.

But Samuel Jackson keeps being awesome, and this - probably the best political ad ever - changed my mind:

So, in the spirit of waking the fuck up, I'd like to start with two things I've noticed (or had pointed out to me) about the Republican campaign:
1) The Karl Rove Academy of Projection (KRAP) is an often-used tactic of the Republicans where a Republican accuses a Democratic person, policy, platform, etc. of the very problem or weakness the Republican has.
2) Romney and company speak to all of us as if we were Fox pretend News devotees who will uncritically accept whatever is said, no matter how demonstrably false or batshit it is.

Whereas number 1 works for them a lot of the time, sadly - because it instantly confuses the easily confused - number 2 has proven disastrous for their campaign (yay!) because those of us who weigh the credibility of everything any politician says, or anything the media says about them, will fact check it. That's why Paul Ryan's mostly fraudulent speech at their convention was such a flop outside of Republican circles.

The main theme of their campaign is that the wealthy are the "makers" and everyone else, particularly the poor, are the "takers," which is theme that the right has been developing for a while now, but has finally surfaced in this election in its naked form.

Of all the ways that can be controverted, perhaps the best is to point out the sham of their favorite (and completely debunked) economic theory. Let me use Robert X. Cringely's words here:

Then we have Romney's infamous accusation that 47% of the nation are lazy bums (those damn "takers"). I won't belabor the incredible, gob-smacking stupidity and brazen callousness of this, as many on the left and right(!) have done that so well. (I could rant over several posts about Romney's crack about people thinking they're entitled to food, but I'm going to spare us both that.)

What I didn't see addressed enough was the composition of that 47%, which you can see in the chart below, and the primary reasons why the low income portion is so large: Bush's tax cuts and people being cast into lower tax brackets (read: poverty for many of them) due to the recession. There's much more good detail on this here and here.

Even though the Republicans claim they intend to help the middle class in the future (because they can't claim they have in the past), when you explore how they intend to do that, it falls apart. it's not through tax breaks (those will be only for the rich), it's through "growing the economy" through supply-side economics, which doesn't work (see above). So they're lying. And they hope that, like a good Fox pretend News sucker, you'll buy the lie again.

The bottom line: they honestly believe the poor and even the middle class don't really matter. And in their world, they don't.

So, I hope that come election day, this will be the look on the Republican ticket's faces:

Finally, I want to make sure you saw this wonderful moment where the token Republitard on "The View" tries to blame the economy on Obama to his face.

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Hello. I write about music, movies, and books. Sometimes I mention real life, but am cautious as I was there when dooced became a verb and now people lose jobs over a Tweet (which was known as a sentence when I was in school). I consider the web PG-13, meaning the occasional f-bomb is just fine. Please comment if the mood strikes; I only delete spam and felonies. Thanks for visiting.